St. Paul explores helping hand for struggling Dorothy Day Center

The Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul. (Pioneer Press file photo: Sherri LaRose-Chiglo)

After 32 years in downtown St. Paul, the Dorothy Day Center is struggling to make ends meet while also meeting the needs of the growing Twin Cities homeless population, organizers say.

City officials are alarmed but not complacent.

At the center's anniversary breakfast Thursday, May 2, Mayor Chris Coleman is expected to note the center's challenges and discuss possible strategies to help steer the more than 200 people who spend their nights on the shelter's floor into beds and services.

Chief among those strategies, he'll announce the formation of a task force to study new funding possibilities and the likelihood of providing a wider array of services -- perhaps at a new location.

"There's people there that are sleeping with oxygen at night," said city planner Nancy Homans, a key organizer of the effort. "There's people that are coming straight from surgery. It's no longer safe or dignified."

The center costs about $2.5 million a year to operate, and about two-thirds of the amount is funded by Catholic Charities, said the organization's CEO, Tim Marx.

"We're not satisfied with what we're doing there," said Marx, a former state housing commissioner. "It is overwhelmed with people."

By some counts, the center cares for 81 percent of the homeless people in Ramsey County. Among them: women fleeing domestic violence, people in need of job training and others requiring mental health counseling.

Advertisement

The recession, foreclosure crisis and changing demographics have contributed to the problem of homelessness. Wilder Research found that the problem in Minnesota grew 25 percent from 2006 to 2009 in the general timeframe of the recession.

The sluggish economic recovery has brought no relief -- the reports show homelessness has expanded by an additional 6 percent since 2009.

Two years ago, the center had to turn people away for the first time.

Marx said many of the homeless are younger and older than ever before. Of about 6,300 unique visitors served at the Dorothy Day Center last year, nearly 400 were young adults and about one-fourth were age 55 or older.

Combined, they spent more than 90,000 overnights last year on cots or blankets in a building that was built for day services only. Mary Hall, another Catholic Charities site next door, offers 57 single-room apartments.

SMALL BEGINNINGS

The Dorothy Day Center -- Catholic Charities' fourth "House of Hospitality" -- opened in 1981 in a small downtown storefront, serving coffee and rolls to 50 men the first day. The current facility, built in 1993, offers barebones overnight accommodations, meals, mental health programs, a small medical clinic run by a separate nonprofit and the only women's shelter in Ramsey County.

"We were asked in 1999 just to have (overnight) shelter for the cold winter months, and we did that for about 125 people," Marx said. "In 2001, the need continued, so we opened up year-round."

By 2009, visitors were also sleeping in an administrative office located west of the main hall, But that overflow area has since overflowed.

"What really hurt us hard was in 2011, we couldn't meet the demand. We had to start turning people away, and camps started emerging in the area between Dorothy Day and Assumption Church," Marx said.

About 200 people sleep on mats on the floor of the center's main building each night and 40 women stay in the upstairs women's shelter. During the coldest months of the year, the overflow space is available for up to 50 people. But the site does not meet city building codes and has to seek exemptions from the city on an annual basis.

"The city is allowing it, but it doesn't have all of the sprinkler systems that we would normally require," Homans said. "They've been getting year-to-year permission ... I personally have committed to the fire marshal that we will work out a more sustainable solution."

The center was originally the result of the collaboration of Catholic Charities, Assumption Church, the city of St. Paul and members of the business community. The city's new task force will include many of the same organizations, and then some.

Coleman has tapped Matt Kramer, president of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, and Carleen Rhodes, president and chief executive of Minnesota Philanthropy Partners, as co-chairs. About 10 to 12 additional members are still being recruited.

Marx expects the task force to come up with some preliminary recommendations in a matter of months. Homans said the possibility of building a roomier new facility at a different location is entirely possible, but all those details will have to be worked out by the task force.

"We are not taking down the Dorothy Day Center. But potentially, if a new facility is built, we might," Homans said.

HOPE AND APPRECIATION

At Dorothy Day, clients waiting for the second of two daily meals Wednesday reacted to news of possible changes there with a mixture of optimism and trepidation.

They acknowledged the building was never intended to be used as an overnight facility. Tim Brown, 57, spent eight months sleeping on the shelter's floor before getting his own apartment.

"It was alright," said Brown, who is partially disabled and walks with a cane. "The mats are nice for about five seconds, and then they're as hard as the floor."

Terrence T. Jackson, 33, said shelters such as the Union Gospel Mission offer a more apartment-like setting -- with beds, food, free clothing and other programming -- for a small fee, sometimes as little as $6 a night. That said, sleeping on the floor of Dorothy Day is "not that bad -- there's worse places that do the same thing," Jackson said.

Nova Raedeke, 27, said she's been homeless for five years, off and on. After being forced to leave her apartment in Hamline-Midway on Tuesday, she spent the night at Dorothy Day in a "women's only" corner. She raves about the staff, but "I don't care what type of background (you have), I don't think any of us should be spending a night on a mat on the floor."

Council Member Dave Thune, who represents downtown, said he looks forward to a more campus-like setting, perhaps with transitional housing for families with kids. "We don't ever want to go through another winter short on beds," he said. "We have a responsibility."

Contributing was Anwer Sumra as a participant in an International Center for Journalists program visiting the Twin Cities. He is a reporter at the Express Tribune in Lahore, Pakistan. Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.